some warm acquaintance after far too long a time. "To think you'd make the time to come and visit me in my present, alas, sadly reduced circumstances! Such thoughtfulness shines out, don't you know, like a beacon of hope in a naughty world. And how are things with you, my dear chap?"
An hour later, in Sector Nine, the Shangri La civil-def security men stood easy, their guns held as though for parade-inspection. This meant that the guns were not, now, aimed at Dredd, but the civil-def men weren't exactly putting them away, either.
"The Lady Proconsul has granted you an audience," said the squad-leader.
"The what?" said Dredd.
The rich inhabitants of Shangri La were forever coming up with titles and little hierarchical rituals for themselves, as if it mattered a drokk in any real world.
"Honoria, Lady Proconsul of the Eastern Tower, Lady Slocombe," said the squad leader, with the cheerful roughness of someone who thinks he has the upper hand, though with no idea of how bad things could suddenly get if he put so much as a word wrong. "You want anything here in Shangri La, you talk to the Lady first."
Dredd considered simply telling the creep to go drokk himself; a Judge with just cause could go anywhere and everywhere he liked within the Mega-City walls.
Forcing the situation at this point, though, would cause needless complications. Better to wait until the Department got around to doing something about Shangri La Towers once and for all.
"Lead on, then," he said, keeping the anger out of his voice to the point that it was merely evident rather than overwhelming. "Take me to this Lady Slocombe of yours."
The security squad took him through access corridors and halls, which were lined with everything from colonnades and antique Classical statuary, to gemstone-woven tapestries, to ancient, genuine glossy-paper posters from before the War, screen-printed on actual paper and held up with actual and provenance-certified blu-tack.
Horded treasures from the burnt and irradiated remains of the past. The objects had no actual value in themselves; the value lay in all the time and effort spent in locating, retrieving and preserving those relics that had somehow survived in an intact and pristine condition. Some people made a big thing about that.
Every door Dredd passed was closed, with an air that they weren't going to be opened any time soon. They met no other people. Dredd got the impression that he was being very carefully shepherded away from anything of which he might take notice, anything on which he would be forced to take action.
At length, they came to a big set of double-doors flanked by periwigged footmen. The footmen smoothly swung the doors back, and Dredd stepped into an audience chamber.
Actually, it might more properly have been called a boudoir writ large. It was all plush velvet drapery and gilt, gilded statuettes of nymphs and satyrs, burning sticks of musky incense - the chemical components modified, no doubt, to keep them from falling foul of the Justice Department Proscribed Substances list.
Reclining on a day bed, attended by a pair of well-muscled young men in jockey shorts, who fed her slivers of crystallised fruit from little silver plates, was a woman of what some might call a certain age - and which others, with slightly more clarity if less goodwill, would point out as decidedly un certain.
Years of cosmetic surgery and bootleg rejuve-treatment had taken their toll. The dry skin stretched over frail bones gave her the aspect of having at some point been mummified.
She could have been of any age over a hundred. The voluminous winceyette nightie and the bright purple fright-wig were the most natural things about her.
There was nothing frail, however, about her voice.
"You there, young man!" she ordered with the piercingly rude tone of command of the terminally over-bred. "It's about time one of you damn Justice Department chappies got your finger out and came here. I put out the order
An hour later, in Sector Nine, the Shangri La civil-def security men stood easy, their guns held as though for parade-inspection. This meant that the guns were not, now, aimed at Dredd, but the civil-def men weren't exactly putting them away, either.
"The Lady Proconsul has granted you an audience," said the squad-leader.
"The what?" said Dredd.
The rich inhabitants of Shangri La were forever coming up with titles and little hierarchical rituals for themselves, as if it mattered a drokk in any real world.
"Honoria, Lady Proconsul of the Eastern Tower, Lady Slocombe," said the squad leader, with the cheerful roughness of someone who thinks he has the upper hand, though with no idea of how bad things could suddenly get if he put so much as a word wrong. "You want anything here in Shangri La, you talk to the Lady first."
Dredd considered simply telling the creep to go drokk himself; a Judge with just cause could go anywhere and everywhere he liked within the Mega-City walls.
Forcing the situation at this point, though, would cause needless complications. Better to wait until the Department got around to doing something about Shangri La Towers once and for all.
"Lead on, then," he said, keeping the anger out of his voice to the point that it was merely evident rather than overwhelming. "Take me to this Lady Slocombe of yours."
The security squad took him through access corridors and halls, which were lined with everything from colonnades and antique Classical statuary, to gemstone-woven tapestries, to ancient, genuine glossy-paper posters from before the War, screen-printed on actual paper and held up with actual and provenance-certified blu-tack.
Horded treasures from the burnt and irradiated remains of the past. The objects had no actual value in themselves; the value lay in all the time and effort spent in locating, retrieving and preserving those relics that had somehow survived in an intact and pristine condition. Some people made a big thing about that.
Every door Dredd passed was closed, with an air that they weren't going to be opened any time soon. They met no other people. Dredd got the impression that he was being very carefully shepherded away from anything of which he might take notice, anything on which he would be forced to take action.
At length, they came to a big set of double-doors flanked by periwigged footmen. The footmen smoothly swung the doors back, and Dredd stepped into an audience chamber.
Actually, it might more properly have been called a boudoir writ large. It was all plush velvet drapery and gilt, gilded statuettes of nymphs and satyrs, burning sticks of musky incense - the chemical components modified, no doubt, to keep them from falling foul of the Justice Department Proscribed Substances list.
Reclining on a day bed, attended by a pair of well-muscled young men in jockey shorts, who fed her slivers of crystallised fruit from little silver plates, was a woman of what some might call a certain age - and which others, with slightly more clarity if less goodwill, would point out as decidedly un certain.
Years of cosmetic surgery and bootleg rejuve-treatment had taken their toll. The dry skin stretched over frail bones gave her the aspect of having at some point been mummified.
She could have been of any age over a hundred. The voluminous winceyette nightie and the bright purple fright-wig were the most natural things about her.
There was nothing frail, however, about her voice.
"You there, young man!" she ordered with the piercingly rude tone of command of the terminally over-bred. "It's about time one of you damn Justice Department chappies got your finger out and came here. I put out the order
Similar Books
